1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a connector and to an assembling or mounting method therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2003-59590 discloses a connector provided with a retainer. This connector is provided with a housing including cavities, into which terminal fittings are insertable, and a retainer to be mounted through a side surface of the housing while crossing the cavities. Resiliently deformable locking lances project in the cavities of the housing before a retainer mounting portion, and the terminal fittings properly inserted into the cavities are primarily locked by these locking lances. Further, the retainer is movable to a partly locked position and to a fully locked position. At the partly locked position, retaining portions of the retainer are retracted from the cavities to permit the insertion of the terminal fittings into the cavities. At the fully locked position, the retaining portions enter the cavities to secondarily lock the terminal fittings.
With a multipolar connector provided with a double locking mechanism for terminal fittings as described above, resin flowability to the respective parts decreases upon molding a housing and it is particularly difficult to form parts around cavities and small-size locking lances. Thus, there are cases where it is requested to mold a connector housing while separating it into a housing main body including no locking lances and a lance housing including locking lances and these two are integrally assembled after the molding. However, in such a case, the lance housing is arranged on the front surface of the housing main body while the housing main body is provided with a retainer mounting portion. Thus, there is a problem of making the length in forward and backward directions longer to enlarge the connector.
The invention was developed in view of the above situation and an object thereof is to avoid the enlargement of a connector provided with a housing main body, a retainer and a lance housing.